o 



{Z./\^' 



AN 



"F 



RANt loCi 



£^67, 



■ .■'•■■■u.',-.v- 7's'.' i-Jfcjp 












V..- ■• -^-v.'-^-.;)! ■jia 




'i;':':l:iM 






'•li-;l 






e 




The Truly Practical Man, Necessarily an Educated Man. 



ORATION 



DELIVERED AT THE 



COMMENCEMENT 



COLLEGE OF CALIFOMIA, 



WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1867. 

By professor BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, M.A., M.D. 



P O B L I S n E U BY T H K 1 K i: S T E E S OK THE C f. L E G 1 



SAN FRANCISCO : 
TowNE & Bacon, Book and Job Printers, Excelsior Office, 

No. 536 Clay Street, just below Montgomery. 
1867. 



The Truly Practical Man, Necessarily an Educated Man. 



ORATION 



DELIVERED AT THE 



COMMENCEMENT 



^T" 



WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 1867. 



Bx PROFESSOR BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, M.A., M D 



^'■^ST.lt^:. 



X 



PUBLISHED BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE COLLEGE. 



. SAN FRANCISCO : 
TowNE & Bacon, Book and Job Printers, Excelsior Office, 

No. 536 Clay Street, just below Montgomery. 
I 867. 



a) 



ORATION. 



We live in a practical, matter-of-fact age. The universal cry is 
for practical men. Modern philosophy, in harmony with the times, 
is experimental — rejects mysticism, tends to rationalism, and deals 
chiefly with great material questions. It demands leaders and la- 
borers whose intellectual habits have been moulded in the schools of 
experience ; and the tendency is everywhere seen to subordinate, 
almost to ignore, those studies and pursuits which do not, to the 
popular understanding, appear to keep step with what is called the 
march of improvement. 

Success is accepted as at once the test and the measure of abil- 
ity, Avhether we speak of the triumphs of the forum, the cabinet, 
the sacred desk, the pursuits of commerce and industry, or what- 
ever department of intellectual labor is taken as the standard of 
comparison. We cannot object to the judgment which is rendered 
upon this issue, provided the success is a genuine fruit of labor and 
talent, combined with the training of experience, and is not the 
offspring of a lucky accident. Mankind never fail to appreciate 
him who has at once the power and the disposition to serve them 
in whatever sphere of usefulness or honor he may elect. Just in 
proportion to his power and wilhngness to serve will he be used. 
It matters not whether he makes bad poetry or bad bargains, so- 
ciety has no use for such, and the unfortunate author of either is 
left in merited obscurity. 

If it is true that Poeta nascitur non fit, it is not the less true 
that Orator fit non nascitur; and with the orator we may class all 



men who achieve success and eminence as the result of labor and 
study, and the culture which comes from the practice of an art 
founded in well defined and carefully inculcated principles. 

It is equally idle and unwise to quarrel with the spirit of the 
times in which we live. The causes which have developed the exist- 
ing state of public opinion lie far back in the history of intellectual 
and moral development, and their discussion is foreign to our pres- 
ent purpose.* We accept what we find. It may be too materialis- 
tic, too prone to measure results by the vulgar standard of eui bono. 
Grant that its tendency is to sink below their proper value those 
studies which the experience of ages has shown to be well calcu- 
lated to train the powers of the human mind to thejr highest devel- 
opment ; that it exalts art into the temple of science, and encourages 
the youth to seek in the attractive fields of nature for a short cut 
to the attainment of that goal which is to be reached, if at all, only 
by the well-worn paths of patient study. This evil, so fatal to 
scholarship and intellectual growth, will cure itself. All will learn, 
sooner or later, that there is no royal road to learning and emi- 
nence. Everything worth having costs something in labor, or its 
equivalent. Even the free gifts of nature are appreciated only by 
those who have the sagacity to see and the industry to appropriate 
them. Water falls by gravity only as the equation of solar force. 
The sun gives light as the correlate force of molecular vibrations, 
resulting in motions which are either heat, light, or electricity, as 
they are modified by material conditions. Man is not the better 
for these, of any natural bounty, except as by the use of his own 
well disciplined intellectual powers he combines and appropriates 
them. It is at once the glory and reward of an advanced civiliza- 
tion, and of an intelligent appreciation of man's relation to nature, 
to place him in a position to achieve those triumphs which have 
been reserved for the advance of the inductive philosophy. 

" Were nothing sunlikc in the eye, 
How could we light itself descry ? 
Were nothing Godlike in the mind, 
How could we God in nature find 1" — Goethe. 

In considering this subject, let us ask ourselves how far we may 

* Sec Lecky — History of tlie Rise and Influence of Rationalism in Europe. 
Draper — Intellectual Development. BucJde — History of Civilization. 



mould our systems of scholastic learning to meet the demands of 
the asie. Let us determine whether all classes of minds are to be 
put on the same intellectual rack. Whether Latin and Greek — 
important as they are— are the only means of developing those criti- 
cal habits of analysis, comparison, and memory, upon which all good 
scholarship rests. Whether the history of Greece and Rome alone 
deserve the exclusive attention of scholars and gentlemen, in whose 
hands are placed, or are to be placed, the destinies of a continent 
teeming with new problems, social, political, physical. Whether 
the quantity of a Greek hexameter is of more moment than a clear 
knowledge and free use of that noble mother tongue, whose powers 
lie deep in the wells of English undefiled, or of those cognate 
Indo-European languages which form the speech and embalm the 
literature of the most cultivated nations of modern Europe. 
Whether the pohty and social order of the classical nations of an- 
tiquity is more important than a knowledge of the principles of 
international law, and of the origin and progress of the American 
Constitutional Governments. Demosthenes was, beyond dispute, 
the great master of oratory, as Homer of verse ; but does our in- 
tercourse with these noble minds of old excuse our want of famil- 
iarity with Burke and Webster, with Milton, Goethe, and Shak- 
speare ? Euclid has demonstrated, for all time, the fundamental 
problems of geometry ; but shall we, therefore, content ourselves in 
our colleges with an application of his solutions to a few famiUar 
examples in mechanics, falsely calling it natural philosophy, while 
the splendid achievements of modern physics are almost ignored ? 
Can we Avonder that our college-bred sons are lightly esteemed, 
when they are not prepared to solve intelligently the simple prob- 
lems which are presented to them by the miner, the millman, the 
assaj^er, or the manufacturing chemist ? If we cannot excuse the 
self-conceit of the so-called practical man who conceals his igno- 
rance beneath his empiricism, neither can we pardon the college 
which has turned out its graduate in arts so artless that his learn- 
ing fails him when brought face to face with nature and experi- 
ence. 

These and similar inquiries force themselves on our attention 
whenever the question of collegiate or university education comes 
up for discussion, and they must be met. Already they occupy 



the serious attention of law-givers, educators, and the benevolent 
founders of endowments, and have made themselves felt in the 
modification of the curriculum of study of the most conservative 
colleges. 

Time was when all learning was with the clergy, and all the 
forms of scholastic training were moulded under a theological influ- 
ence. Over the doors of such institutions might well have been 
inscribed those lines, inspired by the same sentiment, which old 
John Davenport caused to be engraved upon his own tomb — 

"None but the priests — the sacred tribes, 
And those whom heavenly wisdom guides. 
May to this shrine resort," etc. 

But all this is changed. The Assembly's Catechism is no longer 
propounded in Greek by the college President every morning at 
chapel, to be answered by the student in Latin.* All the solemn 
pedantry which compelled all students to address college officers 
only in Latin, and to uncover — without respect to the weather, but 
with the utmost respect to official authority — in presence of any 
officer, are among the pleasing traditions of an earlier age. If 
there is less show of respect for official authority, there is less show 
of authority itself ; while the nobler sentiment of Bacon is accepted 
as the expression of the inspiration of modern science — " Homo na- 
turce minister et interpres.^'' 

The older institutions of learning, both in this country and Eu- 
rope, have made, as we have already intimated, important, if not 
rapid progress in the modification or in the extension of their cur- 
riculum of study, with a view to meet the change in public senti- 
ment. This is seen in the addition of new chairs in the physical 
and exact sciences — or in the extension of the range of those pre- 
viously existing — and more still in the engrafting of new schools- 
of science, philosophy, and the arts, upon the old stock of the 
parent institutions, expanding their scope in a few cases to the 
proper dimensions of a university. The enlargement of the range 
of study — opening up in many cases field's hitherto untried by or 
unknown perhaps to educators — has been followed by a hearty re- 



* This was the habit at Yale certainly as late as 1*760, and probably later. 



7 

sponse on the part of those who have before sought in vain for 
the door of entrance to the arcana of knowledge in certain directions 
which have been hitherto practically inaccessible. 

In every new community where in the sharp struggle for wealth 
or for the means of existence each adventurer is everything by 
turns and nothing long, it follows, almost as a matter of course, when 
each man considers himself as good as his neighbor — perhaps a little 
better — that learning falls into neglect or some measure of disre- 
spect, while ignorance and empiricism, assuming the garb of knowl- 
edge or the practice of art, with the true spirit of quackery, pre- 
sumes to arrogate to itself the honors, having already attained the 
emoluments, of a professional knowledge. However we may be 
amused or annoyed by turns, there is nothing in this state of affairs 
which ought either to surprise or alarm us. If the muddy pool ap- 
pears profound, its shallowness is betrayed when the particles which 
obscured it are precipitated to the bottom, where they are sure to go 
if left alone. If in a well ordered community one needs boots or 
a coat, he does not order the one of his baker or the other from his 
carpenter. But in all young and formative communities, and espe- 
cially in such a one as was extemporized in California, it happens al- 
most of necessity, that men must presume to do what they must do 
to avoid starvation, nakedness, or other evils. This rule of necessity, 
Avhich compels the lawyer to drive a team for want of a brief, or 
turns the college professor into a vendor of pies and coffee for want of 
students, may be very democratic, but it will be of short duration ; 
although the contempt for learning which accompanies such an ab- 
normal condition of society, may linger long after the organization of 
society itself has become in a good degree well regulated. The fate 
of one of Napoleon's philosophers, taken prisoner by the Algerines, 
who found use for all the arts and trades represented in the ship's 
company, but could divine no use for the student until he described 
himself as a person of sedentary habits, when he was immediately 
provided with feather breeches and set to hatch eggs, may serve 
as an illustration of the estimate placed upon intellectual pursuits in 
a community where men are chiefly occupied by the struggle for 
existence and the calls of natural necessity. 

Every community founded by the emigration or association of 
considerable numbers of people of the same class, carries with it an 



impress of its origin which is well nigh indelible. The Dutch 
phlegm of the aristocratic Knickerbockers, the quaint quietude of 
the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the polished manners of the early 
noblesse of Maryland and Louisiana, the inflexibility of virtue and 
zeal for religious truth of the Puritans of New England, the dash 
and military tastes of the Cavaliers of Virginia, and the re- 
fined piety of the Huguenots of South Carolina, are seen in 
the family likeness of their descendants. This phenomenon is 
seen also in the smaller circles of counties and townships, 
where its influence becomes even more noteworthy. If we 
study the history of American statesmanship, generalship, or 
letters, we find it true in regard to many of our eminent public 
men that they have sprung directly from the stock of one or the 
other of the several colonies here enumerated, illustrating the 
familiar adage that " like produces like," and that the human 
family are subject to the laws of physical and intellectual descent 
which are known to work in the blood of inferior races. 

There is in the history of California since the dawn of its age of 
gold, the most remarkable example in modern times of the sudden 
development of a great and prosperous State out of a distant pas- 
toral province lately acquired from a foreign power. For unity and 
intensity of purpose, for activity, energy, enterprise, fortitude in 
bearing hardships and dangers, it is probably without a parallel in 
the history of modern civilization. Placed between latitudes within 
which exist in admirable combination all the conditions essential to 
the highest development of the human faculties, and the energies of 
the muscular system ; blessed by a climate of wonderful equality, 
adapted to all descriptions of open air labor, whether in agriculture, 
mining, or the mechanic arts ; with a soil of unsurpassed fertility, 
and growing — from the cooler regions of Oregon to the burning 
furnace ( Caliente-forna) of the South — all the productions of tem- 
perate and semi-tropical latitudes, famed long ago for its countless 
herds of cattle and bands of horses ranging over boundless plains, 
careless of human training ; wonderful in its topography — its in- 
terior valleys, its coast ranges of subordinate mountains, its serried 
crests and lofty masses of the Sierra Nevada, falling hardly below 
the line of perpetual snow, rich beyond example in its precious and 
useful metals, and varied mineral products — washed by the greatest 



9 

of oceans, but accessible with daily increased facility by the trans- 
continental route once deemed so impassable — California occupies 
an unrivaled position crowned with countless blessings by gift of 
nature ; she Avelcomes the enterprise, the virtue, and the intelli- 
gence of all lands, oifering an asylum and the promise of wealth to 
all ; and, as she repeats to the East the old verse of Berkeley, 
" Westward the course of empire takes its way," she sounds into the 
dull ears of the ancient life of Asia the battle-cry of human 
Freedom and progress. 

From the combination of such elements of power and progress, 
we have the right to expect great results for humanity ; nor shall 
we be disappointed. So long as California produced and exported 
almost exclusively the precious metals, importing nearly all the 
ordinary articles of consumption as well as most of the luxuries of 
life, the development ^f her other resources was slow. But the 
progress of the State in wealth, intelligence and population has now 
placed society on a basis of greater stability. The introduction of 
railv/ays begins already to open up agricultural resources before 
unavailable, and invites to fertile farms and prosperous homes a 
new class of settlers, whose presence insures stability, intelHgence, 
and a varied industry. Manufactures naturally follow in the 
train of social and agricultural development, and it is easy to see 
the importance which this series of changes assumes, in its effect 
upon the immediate future of the State. The general fall of the 
rates paid for the use of money bears testimony to the accumula- 
tion of capital, and points significantly to the new avenues of pros- 
perity which are thus made available to all who choose to enter 
upon them. 

It is plain, even to a person not professionally commercial, that 
the city of San Francisco is fast assuming a position essentially 
cosmopolitan, as the center of lines of great power and influence in 
the affairs of the world. We cannot overlook the remarkable future 
which seems now to be almost a present reality in her Oriental rela- 
tions, so novel to our American ideas. It appears that already 
she has given pause to the long-established course of commercial 
exchange, and that the silver which has found its way hitherto by 
London or Paris to the East Indies, is now rapidly changing its 
course in favor of a direct communication with China and India. 



10 

Accustomed to regard the Oriental nations as equally impassive and 
inflexible, we hardly know yet how to understand the demand which 
is springing up for our American Avoolens, wheat, and quicksilver 
among the Celestials and the inhabitants of Japan, nor have we suf- 
ficiently weighed, perhaps, the vast reserved force which rests in a 
population of eight hundred millions of people, or what an impres- 
sion the vis viva of that reserve may create in all commercial and 
industrial channels of the world, should it move, even slightly, in 
the direction of a consumer of even a few products of our industry. 
A policy at once humane, just, and friendly towards the governments 
of China and Japan has not failed to secure for American commerce 
in those countries what has hitherto been denied to other nations. 
The advantages thus gained we must be careful to preserve and ex- 
tend. As a commercial center, destined to be second on this conti- 
nent only to New York, the question occurs : What shall be done to 
provide for the growing intellectual wants of the city and State ? 
The absorbing demands of an intense materialism have hitherto 
blinded the eyes and deadened the ears of the community in a great 
degree to their duties in this direction. It becomes, therefore, the 
business of the educated men of the State to consider maturely and 
provide wisely for those demands, that the fruits of intelligence, cul- 
ture, and virtue may be equal to the material prosperity which 
already smiles on the Golden State. 

Standing here on the vantage-ground of the world's experience 
an physical, intellectual, and moral progress, we may with profit re- 
view its history in search of those lessons which experience offers as 
rapplicable to our conditions. 

The establishment of Universities — as at Bologna, Padua, and 
Paris, in the thirteenth century — the invention of printing in the 
middle of the fifteenth, and the discovery of America at the close 
of the same century, conspired to hasten forward the revival of let- 
ters and art, which had already commenced in the eleventh century, 
and to make this period of modern history more famous than any- 
thing since the best days of the Roman Empire. During all the 
period of the Middle Ages, we find no progress in the physical sci- 
ences, and but Uttle advancement in any department of human 
learning. The inductive methods, clearly recognized by some of 
the older philosophers, seem to have been forgotten, or had come to 



11 

be absolutely stationary, during tbe middle ages, when dogmatism 
and mysticism took the place of that clear perception of truth, the 
firm grasp of which is essential to the progress of science. Hence 
we find indistinctness of ideas in all departments of learning, which 
is the fruit, if not the cause, of the want of an exact use of terms 
as connected with, and expressive of a precise knowledge of facts 
and phenomena. It is curious to note how completely at sea the 
ablest minds of this period were, whenever they attempted to rea- 
son upon the most famihar facts of ordinary observation. When 
" hydrostatical paradoxes Avere proved and illustrated by experi- 
ment," and it was seriously argued that "levity is a positive quality 
of bodies, as well as gravity," and that " heavy bodies must fall 
quicker than light ones." The controversy of the Aristotelians 
with Galileo in the seventeenth century, when from the leaning 
tower of Pisa he demonstrated the fallacy of the latter proposition 
by actual experiment, was closed by the argument still in use when- 
ever a favorite assumption is overthrown by facts, — well, " so much 
the worse for the facts." But gradually the dogmas of the days of 
mysticism have one by one fallen before the light of truth. The 
supposed influence of planets upon the fate of men at birth, which 
serves now to create a smile, or adorn a fiction, was for ages the 
firm belief of the strongest and sharpest intellects as well as of the 
popular masses. Even Bacon, often called the father of the in- 
ductive methods, could not completely purge his mind — great and 
small by turns — of the superstitions of his times, and his ill-con- 
cealed belief in astrology is in harmony with his crude lists of 
materia medica. Let us not arrogate to ourselves great supe- 
riority over those times of old, for the human mind is ever open 
to the secret misguiding influence of mysticism — is always more 
chameleon-like than independent, and invariably takes form and 
color from surrounding influences. We make ourselves merry 
over the delusions of medieval alchemy, but we need not go 
beyond the Golden Gate to find a repetition of the same phe- 
nomena: — under our own eyes — when we see in open court a 
modern Raymond Lully, with his "invisibles," magnetizing the 
gold from the grasp of those whose ancestors drank, under the 
wrath of Moses, the dust of the golden calf.* Nor was the effort of 

* Case of Hobson, San Francisco, May, 186*7. 



12 

the alchemists to convert the baser metals into gold by any means 
so absurd, in view of the state of knowledge at the time, as the per- 
sistent efforts we have all witnessed in these regions, and which are 
daily repeated, to solve some of the difficult chemical problems of 
practical metallurgy, by various ingenious mechanical contrivances. 
Whenever men abandon the strict methods of patient investigation, 
and follow the promptings of the imagination or the suggestions of 
hope, in place of facts and the principles drawn from them, then 
the day of empiricism and quackery begins, tables turn, mediums 
communicate messages from the illustrious dead in execrable Eng- 
lish, astrologers prophesy, and alchemists with magisteries convert 
iron into gold, or extract the precious metals from their chemical com- 
binations by mechanical methods. But happily ,~we live at a time 
when all are ready to concede the value of knowledge — when, 
thanks to the general training of a good common school education, 
the masses of men everywhere are able to see and appreciate, to 
some extent, the advantages of superior culture, and the learned 
man is no longer in danger of being an object of aversion or suspi- 
cion to the vulgar, nor does he stand in need of the protection which 
in the seventeenth century called forth from Naudseus, a learned 
Frenchman, "An apology for wise men." 

By the admirably digested law of 1866, the People of California 
in their " Act to provide for a system of Common Schools," * have 
laid the foundation and set up the framework of the best system of 
general common school education for the whole people which exists 
in any State or country where the English language is spoken. If 
the compulsory system of Prussia is more mandatory, we should hes- 
itate long before exchanging for it the free scope of our own. Your 
distinguished Superintendent of Public Instruction f has done for 
the future of California what it rarely falls to the lot of any one 
man to accomplish — the moulding and training of the youthful 
minds of this and succeeding generations in the elements of a sound 
education upon a broad and liberal basis — rich in the best fruits of 
a long and successful experience drawn from all sources. The full 
measure of practical wisdom embodied in this organic Act can be 
seen in its best development only, as time crowns it with the fruits 

* Statutes of California, 1865-BG, Chap, cccxlii, p. 383. 
f John Swett. 



13 

of successful trial : it lays broad and deep the foundations of intel- 
ligence and virtue in the commonwealth. Education — meaning a 
symmetrical development of both the moral and intellectual powers 
of man — is by universal assent, in these days, the corner stone of 
the Christian State. Despotism, whether political or religious, is 
the only advocate of ignorance among the masses of mankind. It 
has tried its hand in all ages at the administration of human affairs, 
and with a success which has been generally in proportion to the 
absence of intelligence in the masses governed. The American 
system, whatever its defects may be, clearly recognizes and has 
ever done so, the duty of the State to foster and develop popular 
education — to make it possible for every man to secure the blessings 
of education in some important degree for his children. So clearly 
was the training of youth in the higher departments of learning 
recognized by the early colonists of the older States of America, 
that we find them enacting laws and imposing taxes at a very early 
day for the promotion of education and the endowment of colleges. 
It is needless here to repeat the familiar history of the early devel- 
opment of the educational plan of the older States, or to cite in 
proof of their recognition of their duties to posterity, the endow- 
ments, feeble almost to parsimony, which initiated the life of Har- 
vard and Yale, of Hampden-Sidney, or William and Mary. 

If it is true, as Cotton Mather asserts, that " God winnowed the 
chaff of the old world to obtain the few grains of wheat wherewith 
to plant the new," we must acknowledge in view of the early strug- 
gles of the older and now the most influential colleges of the East- 
ern States, that the soil into which the educational portion of these 
germs was cast, was for some generations not a hotbed — the tardy 
and stunted earlier growth of the system contrasting strangely with 
the vigor which marks its present development. 

The experiences of these early colleges will not be repeated ; 
the times are changed, and we are changed with them. Learning 
in those times, as has already been intimated, was mostly with the 
clergy. Colleges were regarded as schools of the prophets, or, 
like Dartmouth, were founded to convert the heathen. The country 
was poor, population sparse, the common school system undeveloped, 
the learned professions in the hands of the few, taxes reluctantly 
paid and often in kind ; the arts had hardly begun to exist, cotton 



14 

and steam were unknown, not to name the discoveries of science 
and the wonderful combinations of capital and skill which have de- 
veloped with such gigantic power the resources of the world in 
the nineteenth century. 

Legislatures, more than the people who create them, are sensitive 
almost to jealousy of religious or sectarian bias in the control of pub- 
lic educational institutions drawing their support in any degree from 
the State. Avowedly a religious people, and declaring in our na- 
tional Constitution liberty to all men to worship God according to 
the dictates of their own consciences, we seem as legislators, when 
it comes to the enactment of laws respecting education, practically 
to ignore the rehgious element, leaving matters of this sort to shift 
for themselves, with a latitudinarianism worthy of Pagan Rome. 

The truth is, our English and American common law is essentially 
unchristian. While we draw our moral code from the Gospels, our 
civil code is Saxon and Roman — essentially Pagan.* 

The 30th and final section of "^ An Act to establish an Agricul- 
tural, Mining, and Mechanical Art College," passed in 1866, by the 
Legislature of California,! declares that " the College shall not, in 
any manner whatever, be connected with, or controlled by any sec- 
tarian denomination." As there is no act of public worship of God 
possible to which the term " sectarian " might not be applied by 
some party of different belief, or of no behef at all, such an enact- 
ment would appear really to be equivalent to an absolute prohibition 
of all acts of worship whatever. The intent of the clause is obvi- 
ous, but its practical working may be disastrous. This subject has 
excited much discussion in the older States, and it is instructive to 
observe its practical workings. In Massachusetts, where from the 
first the State had a voice in the administration of the affairs of Har- 
vard College — originally the most orthodox. of all colleges — she has 
within the last two or three years entirely withdrawn from the uni- 
versity councils, leaving the duties formerly exercised by the Over- 
seers, representing the Commonwealth, to devolve by law upon the 
general body of the Alumni. The institution thus becomes an inde- 



* For a striking exhibition of tliis strange anomaly, see Mr. H. Dixon's " New 
America," cliapter xli, " Domestic Law." 

f .Statutes of California, 1863-66, p. 509. 



15 

pendent organic whole, and having derived its funds in some small 
degree from the State, but far more from private benefactions, it is 
now wisely left to ordain and manage its own affairs, subject only to 
the high court of convention of its own peers, the Republic of Let- 
ters of its own Alumni. At Yale, the State has only a formal and 
never a controlling influence in the college corporation ; the Gov- 
ernor and six senior members of the State Senate being, ex officio, 
members of the Senatus Academicus, but always a lay minority, the 
majority being, by the terms of its charter, ministers of the Congre- 
gational denomination. Practically, the religious complexion of 
these institutions exercises no undue influence on the students, who 
are at liberty to elect their own form of worship, always providing 
that they elect and adhere to some form. It is unavoidable, in the 
very constitution of human nature, that some form of rehgious be- 
lief should prevail. To meet this exigency, the Legislatures of Vir- 
ginia and of Michigan have provided, at the Universities of those 
States at Charlottesville and Ann Arbor, that certain religious per- 
suasions, named in the Act, shall, in rotation, and for a prescribed 
time, hold sway in each. But in the natural progress of develop- 
ment, arising from the demands of the times, and the increase of 
the means of instruction, the older institutions before named have 
evolved successively one Faculty, or body of instructors, after an- 
other, until the " College," which was originally confined in its scope 
exclusively to training young men for the ministry, and in belles- 
lettres, and mathematics, and to granting degrees in arts, has now 
become the nucleus of separate and distinct faculties of Arts, Law, 
Medicine, Theology, and Science — each faculty exercising a separ- 
ate function, prescribing its own order of study, its conditions of ex- 
amination, and enacting the by-laAvs under which its affairs are 
conducted : in short, maintaining a completely separate existence, ex- 
cept that all recognize a common President, who alone, under the 
authority of the General Board, has power to confer degrees. 
Thus, almost without the knowledge or consent of the parties inter- 
ested, has the original idea of an American College been enlarged 
to the dimensions of a University. 

The question of greatest practical importance in the educational 
affairs of California is, How shall a high collegiate or university 
system be developed here, and in what respects must it be modi- 



16 

fied to meet the wants of the situation and time ? Something 
higher and broader than a common school system, as well as some- 
thing more special and professional, must be provided, if we would 
have educated men trained to fill the high positions of responsibihtj 
and honor which the public duties and requirements of a great and 
growing community of intelligent American freemen demand. It is 
inevitable that in the progress of human development there should 
be a demand for men who, from their acquirements, talents, and 
position, are raised above the mass. If the average intelligence of 
a community is raised by the normal operation of a well-considered 
system of common schools, it becomes all the more important, as it 
is also the more practicable, that there be those who, by virtue of 
the power of a superior culture, may rise to a controlling influence 
in all departments of the State — civil, literary, scientific, military, 
commercial and religious. There is but one way in which this select 
class of controlling minds can be prepared properly for the high 
duties awaiting them, namely : by the establishment of a higher 
class of institutions of learning. If this svibject has yet had but 
little attention in California, the cause is not difficult to assign, nor 
is the little progress made in this direction in any just sense a cause 
of reproach to the intelligence of her people. The time is now 
arrived when it must, and doubtless will, receive the attention which 
its importance demands. 

The conditions of life in California have, up to a very recent 
period, been in some important respects quite peculiar and without 
a parallel even among what we call the newer States of the Union. 
The first emigration was, to an unusual extent, of young men in the 
vigor of life, without social ties, and fluctuating to an extraordinary 
degree. The arrival of the new comers for many years was almost 
equaled by the departure of those who had filled themselves with gold 
or disappointments, so that the actual increase of population in the 
State in 1863 over what it was in 1853 was far less than it had 
been in most of the Western States during the same period. Even 
to this day, a majority of adults whom one meets in California, and 
who have been here from what they call an " early day," speak of 
" going home " as soon as circumstances permit. Few, compara- 
tively, act or speak as if they expected to identify themselves per- 
manently with the fortunes of the State, or to die here. So long as 



17 

this is the case, we need not wonder that many things, and especially- 
educational matters, have remained in a crude, undeveloped or 
unsatisfactory condition. The pioneer who moves his family to 
' Minnesota or any Western State, carries with him all his worldly 
goods, and his family, if he has one, expecting to cast in his fortunes 
with the State of his adoption, he thus becomes at once interested 
in the permanent establishment of all the elements of prosperity and 
enjoyment — civil, political, material, educational, religious and social. 
The difference between such a citizen and one who expects to go 
" home " as soon as he has " made his pile," is so fundamental and 
conspicuous, that our wonder ceases when we contemplate it — or 
rather, is turned to surprise, that with this enormous drain on her 
resources, vital and material, the actual progress of California has 
been what we see to-day. But time, which solves so many problems 
and cures so many evils, is fast putting an end to this anomaly. 
The second decade of American life in California is approaching its 
completeness, and with it is coming up the goodly army of young 
Californians to the manner born, who have known no " home " but 
this ; who are happy to call it home, and are blissful in their igno- 
rance of the flesh pots of Egypt, after which the fathers yearn. To 
them this is a goodly country, whose sunny skies, golden-flowery 
plains, and snowy mountains offer ample scope and verge enough to 
fill the measure of youthful hope and ambition. For them your 
State has made bountiful provision in the common schools, where 
both sexes are furnished with the elements of knowledge by skilled 
professional teachers — the best paid body of educators in the world, 
and worthy of their reward. 

But what has California done for that higher education which 
every community must provide for her sons, if it would have men 
properly trained for the learned professions, for statesmen, for 
arts and sciences ? The Constitution of the State* distinctly recog- 
nizes the duty of the State to establish one or more Universities. 
Certain public lands have been set apart from the General Govern- 
ment for educational uses, but the proceeds of sale of these lands 
have thus far, I understand, gone exclusively to the support of 
Common Schools. No University Fund, or lands specially devoted 
to the uses of a University, exist. 

* Section two, Article IX. 



18 

The Act already alluded to, establishing an Agricultural Col- 
lege, does not contemplate a University. It is far too special and 
restricted in its provisions for this ; nor was it so designed. Called 
forth specially to meet the exigency of securing to the State the 
benefits arising from the appropriation of public lands, under what 
is known as the "Agricultural College Bill," it appears to have 
been drawn up somewhat hastily, and fails to cover all the ground 
implied in its title ; the course of instruction as set forth in the 13th 
Section being deficient in the omission of several important subjects 
connected with a good training in Agriculture, Mining, and the 
Mechanical Arts. From the mode of its organization this proposed 
Agricultural College is open to the much more serious objection, 
that it is ever subject to the fluctuations of party politics, than 
which nothing can be more fatal to the well-being of an institution 
of learning. It is also cut off from the advantages which in the 
older States have been found so valuable, arising from their connec- 
tion with existing institutions of learning, whereby it is deprived 
of the aid to be obtained from the association of labor and capital, 
and the use of existing establishments if any such there were. 

The State is, therefore, still without any provisions for the estab- 
lishment of a University. No merely polytechnic or trades school 
— no simply professional school — is a University. Such schools if 
wisely ordered are extremely useful, and the pressing demand 
which is felt in this State for a good Mining, Mechanical, and Ag- 
ricultural College may very likely for a time keep back the devel- 
opment of a State University, and obstruct the plans of those who 
seek to establish literary and scholastic institutions of a higher 
grade, like the College of California. 

There is nothing so conclusive in life, as the teachings of experi- 
ence. No arguments are so powerful to expose a false system as 
this test. Men who mistake the courage which rises to cope with 
great physical obstacles and the brute force of indomitable will for 
power and training, will be convinced of their errors only by the 
teachings of experience. As a people, we have a high conceit of 
our own powers. We have accomplished many wonders, and be- 
hove ourselves capable of achieving anything. A writer in a 
recent pubhc journal, discussing the peculiarities of the American 
character, speaks thus ; 



19 

" The ear of the pubhc has been so stuiFed with compliments to 
American enterprise, American self-rehance, and American practical 
talent, that the public has not yet discovered how incomplete and 
fragmentary is the practical side of our character. We are swift 
in all things, but thorough in very few. We are practical, it is 
true, up to the demands of our most pressing necessities, but be- 
yond that point chaos begins."* 

Few words are more thoroughly abused than the word practical. 
In its proper sense, of one skilled in the use or practice of an art 
or profession, we all accept it as of excellent meaning. But too 
often it is employed as an apology or cloak for ignorance or arro- 
gant pretension — or is used as a weapon of oifense against those 
whose knowledge it is designed to undervalue by the assertion that 
it is " theoretical," and not practical. It needs but little experience 
in the affairs of life to demonstrate the fact, that of all men, the so- 
called practical man — meaning one who has acquired an art without 
training or culture — is the greatest theorist, while the truly prac- 
tical man combines the experience derived from the practice of an 
art with a competent knowledge of the principles on which it rests. 
There is a certain indistinctness of ideas and mental confusion on 
the part of many intelligent persons on this subject, which has its 
origin in a want of a clear notion of the fundamental difference 
between art and science. If we examine the records of invention, 
we find that art has generally preceded science ; that we are in- 
debted to the middle ages for the invention of printing, of paper, 
glass, gunpowder, the mariner's compass, algebra, and many other 
things of a like kind. Architecture at the same early period 
reached a point of beauty which it has never passed ; so that a re- 
actionist, reasoning against the claims of modern times to superior 
science and skill in the arts, might make a plausible argument in 
favor of the mediaeval period. The proper answer to such an argu- 
ment begins, " by distinguishing between art and science in the 
sense of general, inductive, systematic truth. Art is practical, 
science is speculative : the former is seen in doing ; the latter 
rests in the contemplation of what is known. The art of the 
builder appears in his edifice, though he may never have meditated 



* Atlantic Monthly, April, ISBV. 



20 

on the abstract propositions on wliicli its stability and strength 
depend. The science of the mathematical mechanician consists in 
his seeing that under certain conditions, bodies must sustain each 
other's pressure, though he may never have applied his knowledge in 
a single case." * * * " ^j.^ ig the parent, not the progeny 
of science ; the realization of principles in practice forms part of 
the prelude, as Avell as of the sequel of theoretical discovery. Thus 
the inventions of the Middle Ages before alluded to, though at the 
present day they may be portions of our sciences, are no evidence 
that the sciences then existed, but only that those powers of prac- 
tical observation and practical skill were at work which prepare the 
way for theoretical views and scientific discoveries."* If the prac- 
tice of an art implied as a prior necessity to its sliillful use a knowl- 
edge of the principles of science involved in it, what mechanician 
so learned as the juggler who balances on a pole, or the monkey 
who swings by his tail ? 

The same distinction obtains between invention and discovery, 
which is made between art and science. Many an invention of the 
greatest importance adds nothing whatever to the sum of human 
knowledge — does nothing to enlarge the boundary of scientific 
truth, and yet it may change the whole face of society. The dis- 
covery of voltaic electricity and of electro-magnetism preceded by 
many years the invention of the electro-magnetic telegraph, which 
involved no single fact or principle new to science, nor one which 
science had not long before presented to the free use of the in- 
ventor. He who devotes himself to enlarging the bounds of hu- 
man knowledge must rest content too often with the fame which 
history is sure to award him, while the inventor applies the prin- 
ciples which the investigator has discovered, to enrich the domain 
of art or benefit mankind. It is the happy lot of modern science, 
however, often to combine in one these two functions, and the rec- 
ords of science give us illustrious instances of the union of science 
and art — of discovery and invention in one — of which the safety 
lamp of Davy and the discoveries of Daguerre and Talbot in sun- 
painting are in point. 

Did time permit, I would here enter a plea in favor of the 



Whewell — History of the Inductive Sciences. Vol. i, p. 333. 



21 

disciplinary value of scientific studies, as an element of intellectual 
training — comparing favorably with, those other studies of a 
linguistic character which have hitherto occupied so absorbing a 
place in collegiate life, and which must ever form part of a polite 
education. The methods of investigation in use in modern science, 
in the severity of the logic and inductions employed, in the patience 
and caution they demand, are surpassed in rigor only by the dem- 
onstrations of mathematics. The constant tendency is to place 
everything in science, as far as possible, upon a mathematical 
basis. The elements of quantity, motion and time find application 
even in the departments of general Natural History, while in 
Physics and Chemistry we see sciences formerly occupied chiefly 
with the exhibition of phenomena now well settled in mathematical 
exactness. The methods of investigation employed by science in 
the discovery of truth and in enlarging the bounds of human 
knowledge, are, of all known methods of intellectual exercise, 
those best calculated to train the mind to habits of close and patient 
observation, comparison and analytical weighing of evidence. The 
practical reformers in science, the men who first broke away from 
the mysticism of the mediseval times, appear to have been fully in- 
spired with the spirit which should ever actuate searchers after 
truth. " They were modest, slow, despising no knowledge — 
whether borrowed from tradition or observation, confident in the 
ultimate triumph of science, but impressed with the conviction that 
each single person could contribute a little only to its progress — 
yet though thus working rather than speculating, dealing with par- 
ticulars more than with generals, employed mainly in adding to 
knowledge, and not in defining what knowledge is, or how additions 
are to be made to it, these men, thoughtful, curious, and of com- 
prehensive minds, were constantly led to important views on the 
nature and methods of science." * 

This portrait by Whewell, of the practical philosopher of the early 
days of science, was obviously not drawn for the variety of that 
genius most commonly seen hereabouts ! From what has been said, 
it must be evident that the truly practical man must be trained in 
the schools of experience and science : if he would cope with the 

* Wiewell — Philosophy of Discovery, p. 105. 



22 

problems he is sure to meet, he must " despise no knowledge, 
whether borrowed from tradition or observation " — he must, in 
short, be an educated man. 

California has never shrunk from any call of duty or of benevo- 
lence Avhen its obligations have once been made evident. Her 
action in the case of the Sanitary Commission rescued that great 
chanty at the critical moment from disaster, and stimulated other 
States to emulate her abounding liberality, which none of them 
ever equaled. Let it once be made clear to the minds of your 
legislators and men of wealth that there remains for them a great 
duty to perform, involving the welfare and happiness of the rising- 
generation and of future ages, and the means will not be wanting 
to make the endowments .essential to establish on a firm and suffi- 
cient basis either the College of California or a State University. 

The same wisdom which has framed a law so catholic and ample 
as the Common School system, will not fail when applied to the 
development of the details of the University system, which is its 
logical sequence — its indispensable supplement and crown. 



..12, 



i^i' 



OiAM.m, 







^S'^ 









iSiii 



